harperbrad

I prefer to leave the minor races alone. They make good sources of cash whenever you are short. They always pay top dollar for techs. The andians are the best, since they tend to research some good techs and sell them at a nice price. --Brad

I think that military starbases are not overpowered. Sure they give a huge military advantage, but you can't move the darned things. If I go and rush a base in the enemies territory, then I've got a freaking huge extension of power in a relatively small space. That's great if the enemy comes to me, but not so good if I want to push the front towards his heartland. Once you've built a military starbase and taken the territory, the thing is fairly useless. By then, my lines of offense have le

Actually, I've seen several posts during the betas that people got "out of virtual memory" complaints from windows. I ran into this myself. I posted on a couple of threads about it. I never crashed due to the memory leaks, but I did find myself rebooting the machine every couple of days when performance started to tank. --Brad

My strategy is to go for neutral in alignment. Pick the evil choice when its really, really, good (like a high %starship bonus) and pick the good choice when its least bad. That should keep you mostly neutral while still getting plenty of benefit from evil choices. --Brad

To reduce your population: 1) Build transports and "recolonize" your enemies planets. 2) If you don't have any enemies, then shuffle the population around between your planets using same transports, or even colony ships in a pinch. 3) Invite invasion from hostile forces (not recommended...) --Brad

I was playing a game last night, fighting off the altarians. I had surpise attacked them and taken a whole passel of worlds. I knew that a swarm of transports would be coming down my throat, so I quickly built some "hunters." A hunter is just a cargo hull filled to the gills with engines and a single laser. I managed to get about 10 unarmed, unescorted transports this way. First, there were single transports to pick off, then some stacks, then suddenly escorts with the transports! Whoo hoo

I always wished they out put a button that says "max" or something so I don't have to fiddle with the friggin slider. It gets very old when you want to sell a tech to 8 different races. --Brad

I am playing a game on crippling (2 levels over tough--all intellegent AIs). I first conquered the Drengin--they had done ok with planets, but the further from the core the better. I just started taking Altarians. There was one system I had been drooling over ever since they swiped a class 26 planet right out from under me. When my colony ship got the system, I grabbed the first decent looking planet--a class 12. Then the class 26 showed up on the other side of the system, alongside a 10,

50 population colonizers is not a good tactic. Still put 500 on each, but build colonizers from the home world. It has a large enough population base to replenish those lost colonists. Little 50 pop planets take much longer to mature than 500 pop planets. The new colony rush strategy seems to be buy first 2-3 colony ships, grab best planets in area, build up homeworld production, churn out colonies until out of planets. Its still a rush, but a slower one that doesn't leapfrog.

I've been playing the latest 1.1 beta on cripppling level. AI is really giving me a run for my money. I'm surprised by how smart its getting with research and trading. Its now very hard to get weapons tech from the AI. I've also noticed that its hard to get propulsion tech. The AI seems to value it quite highly. Defense tech seems fairly easy to pry away. Anyhow, I digress. My latest strategy is a bit of a script: 1) Research up productio

My biggest gripe on PBEM MP games is it takes so darn long for anything interesting to happen. You spend the first couple of weeks (real time) building a little empire, then things start getting interesting. I ran into this in Age of Wonders. The way we dealt with it was by making campaigns where you did not start at zero. You already had several cities and some forces. I've had a novel idea on how to make multiplayer in hotseat or PBE

I've had similiar issues with slowdowns. Sometimes they get better when I reboot the computer. When I exit out of the game, windows will notify me that its out of virtual memory. I've got 512Mb of RAM and was playing a huge galaxy. I only play medium-large now and no longer have the problem. --Brad

Here are my rules: Small planets: Research Medium Planets: Manufacturing or Mixed Large Planets: Cash cows + some manufacturing + some influence (both influence and cash are positively affected by higher population, manufacturing needed to fill all those squares up.) I use the small planets for research, since many small sources of research add up better than many small sources of manufacturing. Unlike manufacturin

I had a set of ideas on my drive in to work today. Summarized they are: 1) Change planet quality to be a function of gravity, atmosphere, and temperature values. 2) Each race has its own function for determining planet quality. 3) The lowest planet quality is 1 or 2, not zero. The terrans prime planet would be an oxygen atmosphere, 1.0g gravity, and temperate climate. Drengins might prefer oxygen atmosphere, 1.4g gr

It was the top seeded torrent. I figured it might be good, so I bit torrent downloaded it. 24 hours later, I bought the game. --Brad

I've seen many posts like "Why can't I see my custom ship in my game? I didn't put any components on it" The reason is that each ship class has an inherent miniaturization associated with it. What we really need is the ability to create custom hulls-- templates of just hulls and jewelry that we can then use as a starting point for any ship. I've done some of this, by creating empty hulls at start up and saving them with the prefix X- I then use th

I notice that after playing galciv2, windows is quite sluggish. After my last game, which consisted of a huge galaxy, followed by some dinking around with the ship designer in a "Battle of the Gods" sandbox, windows reported that it was dangerously low on virtual memory. From my experience, windows acts sluggish after a game of galactic civiliztions 2. After several games, it must be rebooted to restore performance. --Brad

I've recently changed my starting strategy for 1.1b. I keep my tax low for the first 10 or so turns to increase population--you make so little tax at first anyhow. I make sure to buy several additional factories for my home world. I then use my homeworld to churn out colony ships. Its the only world that can take the hits to population. I buy the first couple ships, then build after that. Otherwise, it seems like I buy the first 4-5 colony ships

I'll make these if the AI starts rushing me with colony ships near the beginning of the game. Sometimes I'll bag 10 or more colony ships in a few turns. They are good for this because you can get a quick ship with good sensors that can take out all the unarmed colony ships and constructors. You end up angering the AI players, but then they do brain-dead things like rushing with troop transports next. Bang bang, those fall too. I always call these

I have yet to see a reason to play as the good alignment. Every ethical choice hurts you. The benefits of being good are really mild compared to neutral and evil. I've read that other civs will like you more, but that seems pretty intangible. I'd really like to give good some extra bonuses. How about the following: +15% population growth (due to family values...) Influence bonus Boosts HP as well as defense of ships

This explains why my custom race with 70% growth is just stomping all over the AI races in my Suicidal game right now. I haven't even broke a sweat and I've got all the AI on the ropes. The only race that comes close are the torians... I just totally overpopulated everyone else, got colonies faster and rolled over. I think I'll start over... this is too easy! --Brad

I tend to have the opposite problem as the AI here. I'll send in my fleets, destroy the AI ships, then I won't have enough troops to finish the job. Seems like everytime I invade a civilization I'm short of troop transports. Personally, I think that Frogboy was probably patting himself on the back when he coded up the AI "trick" of making really fast troop transports to sneak past the front lines into undefended planets. The problem is th

Sounds like a reason to research xeno ethics quick if you're good. Most of the alignment events are pretty harsh on good. Alternatively, you may want to wait to research xeno ethics if you are evil.

Speaking of space monsters... I'd love to have an option for dreadlords on the map. Especially if they just show up on the edge of the map with a ton of battleships and troop transports in the late game. Should really shake up the detente that happens near the end of the game.

I usually don't tax my colonies at all on the first few turns of my game. The thought is that if I hold off taxing, then approval will be 100%, population growth will double, and my revenue base will be larger when I do finally start taxing. I ran some numbers through a spreadsheet and came up with the following: Initial conditions: 500 Million colonists +100 Million colonists/turn under 50% taxation<b